Dark Colors of Magic
by AlexKirko
Summary: Reality screams as a mage from a dying world slips onto Earth 38. With his arrival Kara's life is filled with promises of power to bring order to the world and even override her own destiny and seize happiness. But when it comes to magic there is always a catch. (post Crisis on Earth X, fantasy, magic, no femslash for Kara). DISCONTINUED.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Notes**

Hi, everyone, welcome to my new fic.

I love _Supergirl_. The show has so much heart and badassery that it's hard not to like. Melissa Benoist does a fantastic job of portraying a hero that is both inherently good and interesting.

So a plot bunny has been hopping around my brain for the last couple of months. What would it be like if Earth 38 got introduced to a very specific type of magic? Also, what it would be like if the Danvers sisters finally got a break from carrying the world on their shoulders? More info at the end of the chapter: I don't want you to bore you with this stuff if in case you won't like the story.

This is post _Crisis on Earth X_ ( _Supergirl_ season 3, episode 8).

I hope you enjoy this crazy mix.

Disclaimer: I do not own Supergirl and I'm not making any money here. You are looking for the CW network. The magic system I use in this fic has been invented by White Wolf. I own no rights to it either.

 **Dark Colors of Magic**

Vulcan breathed in the smell of coffee and felt his mouth water at the mere thought of drinking it. After a week in this world, he still hadn't gotten used to having food that wasn't fungus grown with magic. His universe had been dying for years, and he had let slip most things that made life worth living: food, art, and travel to places that weren't going to kill him.

As he took a bite out of a croissant and did his best not to lick his fingers, the TV cut to the footage of Supergirl saving some kid from a falling steel beam. Vulcan shook his head and smiled. It was so weird seeing people with superpowers out in the open and not getting shot at.

It was a boon to him though. Tracking her down would be more difficult had she been hiding.

Vulcan checked his watch. Ten minutes. Better start now.

He focused on the cup on his table, peered into the delicious brown liquid, took a breath, and opened his Sight. Coffee exploded into violet and red, colors rolling out of the cup and trickling onto the table in rivulets. It was heat, as clear to his eyes as the liquid itself. The bell above the door chimed, and he raised his eyes for a moment to peer at the pair walking inside. It was a mom and a kid, and their walk was a symphony of color. Warm air flickered across the chocolate skin like low-burning fire, and they breathed out more of it. Sound waves from each step boomed through the room, hitting every patron and bouncing off without anyone noticing. As he looked at the air around them long enough, he began to see the rainbow of colors of their auras: brilliant and dark, ever-struggling against each other.

In short, they looked like mundane humans.

But he was confident that she would come here. Yesterday he had examined three more sites where she had done her heroics, so he finally got a fix on her resonance, and one of the trails he had picked up while combing the city led to this café. A lot of them led to CatCo, but a public setting was better as he didn't need to bypass security.

The bell chimed two more times, and on the third one a girl walked in, altogether unremarkable to the naked eye: medium height, plain blouse and skirt, comfortable shoes, low-maintenance haircut. Buried in her smartphone as most people in this world tended to be. Not that Vulcan was different, but most of the Wise didn't care much for technology—the group he belonged to was the exception.

Vulcan was already maintaining three spells, but this was far enough from his limit that he could splurge. He focused on the area around the counter and pushed some of his Will into the way sound travelled. The counter got a fraction quieter to everyone else, but he could now hear every order at his table as if the customers spoke right next to him.

"Hi, Kara. The usual?" The guy behind the counter was just over thirty, and he was smiling at the plain girl more than he did at other customers.

She looked up from the phone, but Vulcan could only see the back of her head. "Hey, Lloyd. Throw in an extra expresso, will you?"

"Tough morning?"

"You have no idea."

She stepped away from the counter, spotted an open table near Vulcan, and headed for it. He grinned and dropped the spell that had been keeping that spot extra chilly for the last half an hour. It was about five degrees below room temperature, and everyone who sat there complained of a draft and promptly sought a different table. It was fun to use magic for little things.

She sat at the next table, and he could see her better now. She looked like a human: her body was the same temperature as everyone at the café, her heart beat steadily, and she didn't radiate any energy. The thing that gave her away though was how sunlight behaved around her. Everyone's bodies stopped the waterfall of colors pouring through the window, but the subtler forms of radiation still passed through. She created a complete shadow, as if her form greedily soaked up the entire spectrum. She was the right height too, although she looked tense and unsure, and her walk flitted between aggressive and self-conscious. Kara was facing him as she texted, and he was interested to see how she would react.

He stared at the phone until he could see magnetic waves pulsing through it as electricity ran along the circuits. He saw two sources of power—batteries. Vulcan frowned. He hadn't examined this Earth's technology in detail, but he had been sure that normal phones didn't have redundancies. He reached out to the electricity in the device, felt for it, and pulled it toward the microprocessor. Instead of the pop he had suspected, he felt the circuit break momentarily.

In two seconds, Kara's phone began ringing.

She glanced around the room, but he was already pretending to be interested in his coffee. She picked up and said, "Winn, what's up? What do you mean, something is wrong with my phone? I'm holding it in my hands. Yeah, I'll show it to you when I get back. Don't worry, you big baby. Gotta go, my coffee is ready."

While she went up to the counter, Vulcan went through his options. He had thought that Supergirl didn't have technological backup, but he shouldn't have assumed. This whole superhero thing was still new to him though, and he was bound to make mistakes. He smiled: this world was just full of opportunities to learn. Trifecta would be stoked to come here.

Kara came back and began typing again. Maybe he should just walk up to her? His plan had been to fry her phone and offer his own for her to call her work and say that she'd be unreachable. He could start a conversation that way, but if she was going to later show the device to someone who knew anything about electronics, he would immediately become a suspect.

But she looked busy, and he doubted anything except 'Hi, I know you're that superhero flying around in a skintight suit.' would get her out of her work trance. He wasn't that desperate. As his eyes were drifting around the room, looking for something that would cause a suitable distraction, he began to finger a single silver coin in his right pocket—Trifecta's gift would certainly do the trick, although the consequences . . . Then he saw the water sprinklers.

Vulcan began to rise from behind his table, and as he did this, he pulled the heat from a couple cubic feet of air under the ceiling and pushed it into the sensor. An alarm blared, and a shower of cold water hit the room, dropping the temperature way below comfortable levels and shocking his body enough that he didn't need to fake shuddering and overturning the rickety table so that the black sludge remaining of his coffee flew at Kara right as she was beginning to look up at the ceiling. It hit her in the chest, and he thought the resulting blob of black somewhat resembled that weird symbol her costume had.

Speaking of which, blue was beginning to show through the white of her blouse.

"Oh, I'm so sorry!"

Vulcan grabbed his heavy coat off the nearby hanger. He moved to drape it over her shoulders, but she waved him off. "No, no, it's not your fault." She looked into her cup that was rapidly filling with water. "Now my espresso is ruined."

"I insist," he said. "Your blouse is getting wet."

It was only now that she looked at herself. Kara went red in the face, grabbed his coat and buttoned it at a speed that he estimated was just over the human limit. "Thank you," she said. He shivered, and she got up. "Let's get out. The fire alarm must have malfunctioned."

It was still morning outside, and the air was cold, especially now that the shirt he wore was soaked through and clinging to his form. His teeth chattered for a second before he tightened his jaw. Kara was frowning at him. "I think your face is going blue. Look, I work near here, I'm sure I can make it now without your coat—"

He shook his head. "You think I would send you freezing and in see-through clothes back to your job? Who even skips wearing layers in this weather? I mean, Christmas is around the corner."

"I'm hardy." She smiled to what she probably thought was a private joke. "I'm Kara."

She offered him her hand and he shook it. She was warm, her temperature not the slightest bit changed by the water and the weather. He gave her a firm shake. It was a weird feeling: he had suspected she would feel like steel after hearing her nickname, but her skin felt normal to the touch. Was it like the fortification spell he used? That one could only be noticed when something tried to inflict trauma on him.

"Vulcan," he said and she snorted. "Is it weird? What am I talking about, of course my name is weird."

Kara chuckled. "As long as it doesn't have three apostrophes in it, I'm fine. But I suspected the ancient Roman god of smithing to be bigger."

His clothes were beginning to dry, but he could now see goosebumps through the scrim of his shirt. He said, "Ha-ha. Look, can we get somewhere indoors? Or at least start walking where you can get dry clothes? I wouldn't want to reconsider my chivalrous ways because my hands freeze off."

She blushed and searched around with her eyes, squinting for a moment. This close, he thought he felt the familiar shiver of someone casting a spell, but it could have simply been the cold. She asked, "Anywhere in particular that you want to go?"

"I just got into the city. Anywhere hot and with hot food will do, so no sushi, I guess?"

She steered him toward a pizza place. It was a neat little restaurant under a worn dark-red signboard. They had just opened, and the owner himself came to take their order. After Kara ordered a pizza, Vulcan allowed himself to take one too. Most importantly, the room was warm, and the waiter brought tea immediately. Vulcan grabbed the cup to let his hands warm back from corpse temperature.

Kara hadn't taken the coat off, no doubt to keep her costume hidden. He wondered where she kept the rest of it. He said, "You looked busy before that flood. I don't mind if you text, you know."

She blushed, and he decided that the look suited her. "No, no," she said, "I wouldn't do that while talking." She leaned forward, changing the topic. "Were you watching me?"

He nodded. "You were sitting near, and I've never seen anyone type on a phone this fast before."

A bit of tension seemed to drain from Kara's shoulders. "Yeah, I'm a reporter, so it comes with the job."

"Kara?" he asked. "As in Kara Danvers?"

And the tension was back. "You've heard of me?"

"I read CatCo sometimes. And I try to pay attention to the bylines: I think most of us ignore them, and it's unfair to the journalists, you know? When you read a book, you never skip the author's name, but we read journals and news websites as if the articles write themselves."

"You sound like Snapper."

"Snapper Carr?" He stopped himself. "I'm sorry, me fanboying must be weird for you."

"No, not at all! It's just that reporters are never celebrities. Like, we worship Snapper among ourselves, but it's just us, you know? It's great if readers even remember our names. So yeah, it's strange, but not in a bad way. Anyway, Vulcan, what do you do? Don't tell me. You are a smith."

He laughed. Their pizza arrived, and he used it as an excuse to think. "You aren't far off. Only less fifteenth century. I'm an engineer: hardware, software—I can make anything you want. Looking for a job at the moment, in fact." He looked at her with hope before deflating. "Though I doubt a news company has use for anything beyond a website."

After fifteen minutes the pizza was finished. He gave her his phone number and said, "Hope we bump into each other sometime. And if we don't, you can give me a call."

"Nice meeting you, Vulcan," she said.

###

"So what's the verdict, Winn?" Alex asked.

She looked skeptical, and Kara wished her sister would just trust her. She crossed her arms and waited. If there was one thing she understood, it was people. Except for Jeremiah. And Hank. And Mon-El. Rao, she couldn't even be proud of her intuition about people anymore.

Her phone's diagnostic data might as well have been Ancient Greek to her, and Winn knew it, but he still tapped some random point on one of the screens in front of him. He said, "That shouldn't have happened. It's like all the electricity in the phone suddenly gained a life of its own and rushed toward the CPU to fry it. If it weren't for the safeguards I put in . . ." He shook his head.

Alex asked, "Could this have occurred naturally?"

"Extremely unlikely. And I checked the fire alarm that sounded in that café, Kara. There is nothing wrong with the sensors. It looked like there was a spike of temperature around the device, and that triggered it."

She stared at Alex until her sister sighed and said, "Yes, you were right, Kara. Happy now?"

"No." Kara shook her head. Then she smiled. "A little."

J'onn, who had been silent up to this point, walked up to the computer and said, "What is your threat assessment, Supergirl?"

"I think we should bring him in."

J'onn said, "I think it would be better to establish surveillance and have you on standby. This way we may figure out what his plan it faster than if we try to interrogate him. Agent Danvers. Thoughts?"

Alex looked at Kara, then at J'onn, and hanged her head. Without raising it, she said. "Let's recap. A meta-human said he wanted to talk to you, but you appeared busy. So he did something with your phone. When that didn't work, he triggered the fire alarm, and used said opportunity to go to a pizzeria and leave you with his number. Am I missing something?"

Kara bristled. "Um, yeah! The part where he destroyed thousands of dollars of laptops and hardwood floors."

"That was reckless, sure, but it may have been just an ill-advised way of getting to talk to you." She turned to J'onn. "Let's just bring the guy in, talk to him, get him to pay for the damages. If there is something suspicious about him, we can find out about it here."

Kara said, "He did not try to pick me up. I'm telling you, this guy has a plan. But I'm all for getting him here and having a talk. For Rao's sake, he may have somehow found out my identity. It wouldn't be the first time."

J'onn looked at each of the sisters before nodding. "Very well. We'll keep tabs on the area and call in a team when he shows up next."

###

Vulcan stared at the door to the safe deposit room. It had a physical lock.

He had been able to walk into the National City Bank in the middle of the night without tripping any of the alarms. The doors opened to him with a bit of magic, and the guard on duty was fast asleep due to another trick. None of the cameras registered his invisible form, infrared beams slipped around him just as visible light did, and motion detectors didn't trigger because he cancelled the movement of air that his walking created. Even if it meant that he was almost topped out on simultaneous spells and out of a third of his Mana, it was worth it: Vulcan was the perfect ghost, able to slip in anywhere.

The only problem was that he had no way to open a physical door.

Some other Wise could have reduced the door to dust or teleported through it, but that simply wasn't where his strengths lay. To him, energy was an illusion, malleable to his Will like putty, and anything alive was something he understood intimately and could easily tweak, but inanimate objects . . . at best, he could try to weaken the structural integrity of the door, but it was at least a foot thick, and his talents simply weren't enough to get through without tearing it out of the wall.

Alarms began to blare throughout the building.

For a moment, he thought it might have been a mistake he had made, but no, he had removed any trace of himself bar smell and physical tracks that his shoes left on the floor. Shoes he had wiped on a doormat before going in, so unless the guard woke up and took a microscope . . .

Supergirl burst into the hall in a rush of air. Bank counters stood empty, and the gale blew some papers off them. Vulcan didn't dare move. He was in full combat mode, so all the spellwork that he had crafted into his soul was going full-speed. Among it was something that slowed his breathing to about once every three minutes. He watched Kara flip the lights on just as he cancelled the nightvision spell.

She looked tense in the bright light. He didn't think she slept much with a job like this. She did that squinting thing again, but this time his Sight was on, and he saw a stream of gold x-ray beams pour out of her eyes. It would be beautiful if he had put enough protection against x-ray in place. Not like he expected to pass through an airport on his way into the bank. His improved invisibility spell would make him appear as a blur, but it would be enough for her to get his location.

Sure enough, she looked straight at him. "Got ya," she said.

He cursed mentally, and layered another spell on top of everything else already on him. This made seven, so he had just one more in him before he'd have to start cancelling stuff. A spell wrapped him in another layer, bending all radiation outside of visible spectrum. He stepped to the side at the same time, completely silent.

Supergirl squinted and frowned. He began to inch toward the door. She stepped into the doorframe and smiled. "Be careful, Supergirl," someone said into her ear. "Just now, we tracked a strange energy spike at your location." He heard the words, for all the good it did him.

He checked the room for other exits, but there were none. She said, "I have all night, you know. I saw your tracks on the mat on the way in. It's cleaned every evening. And the sleeping guard was a dead giveaway."

Every moment he stayed here, he risked her backup arriving. It would take them a while to figure out how to catch him, and he could probably shift to a smaller form, but if they could track his magic, or at least his use of Mana . . . Vulcan rubbed his eyes. He cast a spell that created the sound of footsteps outside the room, pattering away. She didn't budge.

Kara said, "Why do all villains take me for an idiot? I know you are in here and that you can somehow fool the senses. Why don't you reveal yourself, and we can chat."

Vulcan thought, thank you, but I've been captured enough times.

She seemed like a decent girl. He doubted that whatever government agency she cooperated with was as decent. It was, however, because she seemed nice that he didn't go with the obvious strategy.

From what he had seen, her body somehow absorbed solar radiation and possibly used it to fuel her powers. It stood to reason that if he siphoned it out of her cells, he could weaken, wound, or kill her. He had no way of knowing which.

He also knew that she was strong and durable enough to stop a bus with her own body. If news reports were to be believed, she could lift a submarine out of her water and carry it in the air. Attempting to go through her would likely destroy the building and maybe kill him.

He redirected his augmentations toward strength and stamina. He could see that the alarms were disabled now, and a brief check confirmed it: the only electronics still working in the building were the energy-saving lamps and whatever he and Kara had on them. His cellphone was switched off though.

Vulcan shifted his weight from one leg to the other, shook out his hands, reached to the Supernal, and breathed in. He slowly made his fingers into fists and placed them in front of him, about seven inches apart, forearms parallel to the ground. Power broke through the dam between this world and the Heavens, and at that precise moment Vulcan slammed his fists together and closed his eyes.

The resulting explosion nearly blinded him even from behind closed eyelids as a shockwave of electromagnetic energy burst out of his body, frying anything electronic in the building. Nausea followed, as the darkness that came with the light tore through his flesh, bursting blood vessels and bruising muscle. He gritted his teeth. Too much magic in succession was dangerous in more ways than one: every obvious spell became a beacon for what dwelled in the vast void between realities. Some of the kindest things out there were former Mages that had spent their lives torturing and killing their brethren. Other denizens of the Abyss were worse.

Lamps burst. Whatever communications Kara had with her people died. She was still standing in the doorway in a mixed martial arts stance, ready to grapple or punch.

He let invisibility drop and cast a spell that lit the room up using a long light in the corner. Hopefully she wouldn't notice there was no way it could illuminate the whole lobby. He didn't want to deal with Disbelief right now. Dark things scraped at the edges of his mind, hissing promises of absolute power, but this time he managed to hold them back without more damage.

He saw her jaw tighten when Kara saw his face. "Does this mean you are surrendering?" She didn't drop the combat stance. "Or are we doing this the hard way?"

He took a step toward her and showed her his empty hands (never mind the shortsword on his left hip or the shotgun slung across his waist).

"Hi, Kara," he said.

Her left brow twitched. "I don't know what you are talking about, but you are coming with me, Mister."

He sighed and went to the bank counter. He hopped onto it. "You are supposed to say, 'Hi, Vulcan.' It costs you nothing to be polite." Vulcan cocked his head to the left. "I was suspecting sirens by now, but they aren't coming, are they?" She dropped the stance now and crossed her arms. Great Oracles, was she easy to read. "But someone is coming, I think. Someone who'd go ballistic after hearing your communications go out. That sister you mentioned, maybe? Alex?"

She rushed him then, with all the grace and martial prowess of a speeding rhino. He forced himself to stay still as she grabbed the front of his shirt, bringing his face to hers. "What are you planning?"

Her breath smelled a little of mint and a lot of someone who had been woken in the middle of the night to stop a bank robbery. Vulcan sighed. "I will say this once. Let. Go. I haven't hurt anyone here., but you keep this up, and this will change."

Oh, she didn't respond well to threats. She grabbed his right arm and twisted it to throw him off balance and drive him headfirst into the floor, but he reversed the lock on her, and used her own momentum to throw her over his shoulder and onto the ground. As she crashed, he could hear windows vibrate somewhere in the building. He quickly took a step back.

He said, "Look, again, not looking for a fight here. I'll even talk to you and answer what questions you may have."

Kara didn't get up. She said, "You know, I kept hoping I was wrong. That you really were just a misguided guy with some powers, but no, of course Kara Danvers can't have anything good. Well, no more nice girl."

And she flew up from the floor, fists in front of her, and hit him in the stomach with all her alien strength. The last thing Vulcan saw before blacking out was his blood hitting her face.

###

"Will he be alright?" Kara was pacing the infirmary, and it was starting to get on Alex's nerves.

She had just finished the basic physical exam of the patient, and she couldn't make heads or tails of the data. "Well, it doesn't look like your new friend is Kryptonian or Daxian. My money is on meta-human, because in five minutes he has healed half the bruising." She picked up a syringe. "I'll need a blood sample."

She rolled up Vulcan's left sleeve, disinfected the crook of his left elbow with alcohol, lined up the needle with a vein and pushed. The needle broke. She frowned and took another one. It broke too, not unlike how needles broke when they touched her sister's skin: it pressed upon the skin normally, but when it was time to pierce—snap. "Well, this is problematic," she said and picked up a scalpel. "I can't treat him if I can't give him anything. And I can't give him anything until I find out his species. We'll need to find what can cut him."

Vulcan's shirt was open, and his midsection was a mess. Most superficial bruising was gone, but she could see internal bleeding pooling under the skin. Somehow it spread a lot slower than it should have, just as the man had barely breathed once after being brought to the infirmary by Kara. Her sister was five feet away, worrying her lip with enough intensity that Alex thought she'd need a bandage soon.

She brought a scalpel to his left shoulder where she could test the skin without cutting anything important.

A few things happened.

Without opening his eyes, Vulcan grabbed Alex's arm and tore it out of its shoulder socket. Kara dashed from her corner and grabbed him by the throat. Alex fell to the floor with a yelp, her eyes watering from pain. With his other arm, Vulcan hit Kara in the chest, and she actually skidded a couple feet back.

"Fu-u-uck." Vulcan opened one eye, noticed he was holding someone's arm, turned his head, and looked at Alex. "What in the name of . . ."

Kara said, "She was helping you!"

Vulcan blinked and shook his head. Through the pain, Alex recognized signs of a minor concussion. He said, "Helping me? Sorry then."

And he pulled. Somehow, without standing up or assuming proper position, he popped her arm back in place. Alex gritted her teeth, expecting the wave of pain, but it didn't come. Gingerly, she tested her arm: it moved as if it hadn't been out of its socket. Vulcan smiled and turned his head back up at the ceiling. "I'm just that good. Talk to you lot later. Got internal injuries to heal."

He fell asleep.

###

When Vulcan woke, it was to an ache all over his body and only dregs of Mana in his system.

He thought, I must have absorbed the backlash as I healed myself. Dumb move, considering that he was now captured by the government or whoever Supergirl worked with. Groaning, he opened his eyes and propped himself up.

He was in one of the fancy hospital beds that could be operated by a switch somewhere on it, but Vulcan hadn't been in a hospital in eight years, and there was little light. Fearing the worst, he reached for the Aether and pulled the simplest light sensitivity spell. The room instantly got brighter, and he breathed out a breath of relief. At least these people had no idea what he was or had no ways to suppress magic. That and no guns pointed at him made him cautiously optimistic.

Kara was napping in a corner, and after his sigh she stirred, yawned, and flipped a light switch. The world immediately became white light and pain, and he had to squeeze his eyes shut and cancel the vision augmentation spell.

"I'm so sorry!" she said. "Do you have a headache? Do you feel alright? Should I call the doctor? I should probably call the doctor."

"For Oracles' sake, girl, quiet down. Your shouting is killing me. I'm fine, sit down. Just let give me a second so the pounding in my head stops. And maybe you can show me how to operate this bed?"

She helped him, and he was sitting now. The position let him pretend he was a guest and not a prisoner. Although if this was a prison, then his captors were shitty wardens. They hadn't even strapped him down.

"J'onn, hi. He's awake. No, he looks fine. No, don't wake up Alex, let her rest. Yes, I'll call if anything happens, and you've got the cameras. Fat load of good those did for the bank."

They sat in silence for a minute, but Vulcan had never been the stoic silent type. Eventually, he cracked.

He said, "So, this is kind of fortunate. Except you nearly punching a hole though me." He saw her flinch. "Don't take it to heart. Shouldn't have threatened your sister. I forget sometimes how most people get pissed when it comes to family."

The pity play worked, and Supergirl stopped looking down. "Are you an orphan?"

"Not really. My parents died only a couple years back, but they've been dead to me since I was fourteen. You must have questions."

Kara yawned again. She said, "I wish coffee affected me. At four in the morning it would be welcome."

He shrugged. "If you let me, I can help you with that. It's a fairly simple use of my abilities."

She eyed him suspiciously. "And what exactly can you do, bank robber and property destroyer?"

"In this case?" He grinned. "Make you not sleepy anymore. It's not something you should use all the time, but it's fine once in a couple days."

She frowned. "I thought your abilities had to do with manipulating energy. What the heck, I've done dumber things. Try it."

Vulcan smiled, and snapped his fingers, doing the opposite of what he had done to the guard. His Will touched her Pattern lightly, and she didn't resist him subconsciously, so he just relieved the stress from the nerves and applied some minor healing to fix the microdamage that sleep usually dealt with.

She blinked, her gaze suddenly completely clear. "Wow. Don't tell Alex you can do that, or she'll chain you to a wall somewhere here and throw out the coffee machine."

"I don't know." He smiled. "I like a good roast myself. Using powers to augment your mental state is a slippery slope. Today you are skipping sleep, tomorrow you try to make yourself smarter, the day after that you start to wonder what being a cactus is like." When she didn't laugh, he said, "Well, you wouldn't understand. I have no idea how your abilities work, but I would bet they don't let you turn into a plant."

She had gotten two bananas from somewhere and was now peeling them. She said, "Why did you want to talk to me yesterday?"

Vulcan shrugged and accepted the fruit. It wasn't ripe, but he didn't mind. "I thought you could help me with something. Still do. Can't tell you what it is until I'm sure I'm not imprisoned. By the way, am I?"

Kara looked uncomfortable, but she didn't look away from him as she answered. "J'onn will decide what do you with you when it's not the middle of the night. I mean, you damaged a shop and broke into a bank."

He sighed. "Fair enough. Should have picked a different bank, maybe a different city. That one had defenses against damn near everything."

"Maybe you shouldn't have picked a bank at all, Vulcan? Can't you get a job? Or a real name?"

"What, you guys hiring?"

"We do _not_ hire criminals," she said. After he stared at her for half a minute, she added, "Well, it might have happened a couple times, but not this time."

"Shame. Working with you sounds like fun." He gestured to her costume. "By the way, that looks terribly uncomfortable."

"It's great, actually. And it doesn't get easily destroyed when superpowered men slam me onto the floor of banks."

"Touché." He finished the banana and threw away the skin. "Well, I guess I'll just find somewhere to rob where you guys don't have jurisdiction." At her alarmed look, he added, "Alright, I'll also make sure that they are really bad people and really rich. I don't even need that much."

She groaned and dragged a hand down her face. "If J'onn doesn't put you into jail . . . Maybe, maybe we can find something for you to do, so you'll stop robbing people." She raised a finger. "No promises though."

"Thank you, my gracious host."

"Now," she said. "Tell me about your powers."

She was straightforward, he'd give her that. But giving her a basic idea of what he could do would hopefully stop the agency from trying something extraordinarily stupid.

He said, "It's simple. If it's alive or it's energy, then I can shape it, command it, impose my will."

"That sounds . . . vague."

"More like broad."

She crossed her arms. "Well, can you turn a sound into radiation then, smartass?"

He nodded. "It won't be much, as sound is low in energy, but I can transmute any energy into any other type. You could run, and I could turn all that velocity into light, for example."

He didn't give her more drastic examples of his powers: that he could turn Kara Danvers human, for instance. Sure, she'd probably need to be drained of solar energy first, and it would be temporary, and her resistance might overcome the spell, and it would require a crapload of Mana, but it was possible . . .

He added, "And my ability with life lets me restore the body to what it's supposed to look like without any damage or illness. It's how I healed up after you hit me."

###

By morning Vulcan was starting to get restless, so Kara led him to the training room and let him use it. He began a series of karate katas and didn't respond when she asked him if he needed anything else. Now that everyone had woken, and Alex had examined the man, the DEO leaders conferred in the main room to decide what to do about him.

"Your assessment, Agent Danvers?" asked J'onn.

Alex said, "I'm not sure we can contain him while leaving him any degree of personal freedom, sir. I managed to analyze the blood I scraped off Kara as getting a fresh sample is impossible. He isn't a meta, sir."

"He's an alien then," said Kara.

"No. As far as modern medicine and genetics can tell, what we have here is your average burger-loving male Caucasian with a few genes common to other human races."

Kara frowned. He must have some way to conceal his nature, she thought. Didn't he say he could manipulate biology?

She said, "Sir, I thought about it, and Vulcan was right at least in one respect. He didn't hurt anyone even if he is a criminal."

J'onn gripped the edge of the conference table—thankfully it was built with irritated aliens in mind. "We cannot simply let him go, Supergirl. If what he said about his abilities is true, then he might go into a power station and turn it into a nuclear bomb."

Kara said, "He said he'd like to work for us. And that he can heal people."

Alex looked at her like she was insane. "Come on, Kara, you would trust your health to the guy?"

"No! But it would be nice to have someone on hand in case there are no other options and one of us needs patching up."

J'onn nodded. "I'd like to meet him before I make the decision. Let's go."

Kara had dropped Vulcan off two hours ago. When she came back, he was at the punching bag she used when she wanted to relax: it was filled with steel dust and weighed only a ton. Vulcan worked on it with his eyes closed, and Kara, Alex, and J'onn stopped for a moment, mesmerized by his movements. It was like watching a Shaolin monk practice while imbued with the strength of Mon-El.

Vulcan threw a series of rapid punches, jumped up, and delivered a kick to precisely the same spot with a loud crack, knocking the bag away from himself and toward the ceiling. Steel sand began to pour out from where he had hit the reinforced polymer the bag was made of.

Kara had seen many martial artists, but Vulcan moved as if he started doing katas before he could crawl. She cleaned her left ear: she could swear she could hear a hymn playing in the distance.

Vulcan jumped in place a couple times, and shook out his hands. He hadn't used bandages, and his knuckles were bruised.

"Good morning, mister Vulcan. Do you have a last name?" asked J'onn.

Vulcan turned to them. She expected him to be covered in sweat, but he looked as if he had just finished a walk in a park and not a two-hour training session. "Just call me Vulcan," he said. "Being called 'Mister' by a head of a secret government agency makes me uncomfortable."

J'onn stared at him for a moment, and she recognized the look. Vulcan grimaced. "Stay out of my head, alien and you won't risk tripping the defenses." He looked Alex for a few seconds. "Ah, at least you are human. Not to sound speciest or racist or whatever." Vulcan clapped his hands. "So, did you lot decide what to do with me?"

J'onn said, "To be honest, I'm half-tempted to throw you to the courts."

Vulcan smiled and looked to Alex. "Tell me, agent Danvers, did you find anything strange about my blood? Any scientist worth their salt would try to examine it." When Alex stayed silent, he continued, "It's fine if you don't answer. A lot of people tried to find physical evidence of how these abilities work. They failed, and so will the court, and then you'll have a case where an ordinary human walks into a bar and makes it rain. Even should you provide recordings like the ones the camera in the corner made, it would cause a panic. Undetectable metahumans around us."

There was a lot of bitterness in how he made his argument, bordering on resentment. "J'onn," Kara said. "I think he was captured by the government before."

Vulcan grinned, but it was more of a grimace. He crossed his arms and waited, tapping his foot. She had found him clean clothes, and now muscles bulged under the pristine white t-shirt. If she looked just a bit over his shoulder and strained her senses, she could see a light glimmer of energy. She wondered if he was bending light at this very moment.

J'onn said, "This is a difficult decision to make. I need to balance the risks you obviously pose to society against your liberties. You haven't given us an ID or a detailed explanation of your abilities. You obviously have no remorse about robbing people—"

"Robbing insured corporations."

"As I said, you have no problems with causing damage to society to get what you want, and this is punishable by law. You clearly believe yourself above normal people, or you simply don't care. That café you flooded had students working in it. Some of them will need to take out another loan in addition to their student loans to by a new laptop."

Vulcan did look abashed at that. He looked down and examined the toes of his sneakers. "Damn it. I didn't want to hurt kids . . . do you have a list? I'd like to make it up to them somehow when I get on my feet."

Kara stomped. "No robbing banks!"

"Okay. Jeez, what is it with you and following the law? You'd think that having powers would make you lot loosen up a little."

J'onn said, "It is precisely because we wield power that we must be careful what we do with it. The fact that you don't understand this worries me. Deeply."

"I won't lie and tell you that I won't ever hurt anyone this way again. Sometimes what I had to protect was more important than individual freedom. I don't think I killed anyone . . ."

"On the other hand, you aren't malevolent, Vulcan, and you have rights of your own. As you said, the court probably won't convict you, and a normal prison won't contain you if you tried to escape, which you say you will. You aren't safe to release, and you aren't dangerous enough to detain you here. Do you see my conundrum?"

Vulcan shrugged. "I see it, man, but I don't know what I'm supposed to do? Dance a jig. Swear an oath? Give my ma's wedding band as collateral?"

"Don't get sassy with me, boy." J'onn turned to Kara. "Supergirl. You said we should give him a chance."

"Yes, sir."

"Then it is up to you. The only way I am letting Vulcan out of my sight is if he is under 24-hour supervision by someone who can handle him. If you agree to this, he can stay with you and join the D.E.O. on a probationary basis, so he'll have a salary to pay back the people he hurt. The only alternative I see is a containment cell."

She felt heat rise up her body and to her ears. "J'onn, you can't ask that!"

Vulcan said, "Don't I get a say in this? I have an apartment in the suburbs. You could install a camera or something."

J'onn barked a laugh. "A camera for a man who can bend light? Please. I shouldn't even be suggesting what I'm offering, and I hope to God that you don't decide to betray us and hurt Kara." J'onn stepped toward Vulcan and dropped his human form, gaining a head over the other man. "Because if you do, I will hurt you so bad that even I will have trouble sleeping at night. And then I will drop you into the deepest bunker I can find. Twelve inches of solid steel and an air lock above you to drop food through and another one in the floor for your shit. Are we clear?"

Vulcan gulped, and Kara couldn't help the feeling of warmth welling up in her chest. Sometimes she forgot how much J'onn cared. Vulcan said, "Yes. And I never had any intention of hurting her."

"And none of that 'sometimes people get in the way' crap either. You will become one of us, so if you are in trouble, you come to me. I have enough agents rushing gung-ho into every fight they can find." J'onn apparently considered Vulcan cowed, so he addressed Kara. "I'm sorry for placing this sort of decision upon you, Supergirl, but I see no other way."

Vulcan said, "For what it's worth, I'm sorry too. If you give me a corner, I can bend light and sound around it, so we won't even see each other."

Kara groaned. Of course she wouldn't put a man into a cell and throw away the key for walking into a bank and frying a laptop.

"Come on, Vulcan," she said. "I'll call a cab. Do you need a van to get your things?"

"Nah, I'm good. Didn't have the time to buy much stuff anyway."

###

They travelled in silence. Kara had changed into civilian clothes and now sat puffed up in the corner, as far away from him as the back seat of the cab would allow. He laid his bag in the middle of the seat between them to give her an illusion of space. Vulcan wondered what bothered her more: that she would be letting him into her territory or that a guy she didn't know would be sharing an apartment with her. There was little he could do about the first, and what he could do about the second would only freak her out.

The building was nice, but when the door opened, he froze.

Kara turned around. "Well, are you coming?"

"Holy . . . this place is gorgeous." He stepped inside. "Art on the walls, enough place for training, windows from floor to ceiling. Beautiful. Please tell me that glass is bulletproof."

She said, "I'm glad it will be an improvement for one of us. How could you live in a basement? I think there were more rats in the walls of your apartment than there were walls themselves."

Kara went to the fridge, opened it, then closed it. She looked into a cupboard then closed the door to the bathroom that was ajar.

Vulcan found a corner and dropped his bag. "You look flustered," he said.

"Oh, do I? Maybe this has something to do with the fact that a guy—a criminal, might I add—that I met yesterday is suddenly in my house, and he'll be living here for Rao knows how long? Or maybe it's that I'm supposed to be some sort of watchdog? I have a life, you know. I have friends and family and stuff I do. Morgan Edge will level this city in his stupid revenge plot at any moment, Lena might kill him if he pisses her off, Sam needs help with her daughter and she might help Lena, and then both of them will be in jail, so who will take care of Ruby, and Alex just went through a breakup with her fiancée. And here I am, watching a guy day and night because he fried someone's laptop." She gestured to the fridge. "I have milk, bread, and ham. Make yourself a toast or something. I'm going to take a shower."

She stomped off to the bathroom and left Vulcan alone.

The first thing he did was check for bugs. If there were any, then they were switched off as all electricity was where it was supposed to be. Then he redirected the sound from the bathroom door until he heard faint muttering and water hitting skin. Vulcan immediately dropped that spell: all he needed to know was that she wasn't listening or watching.

He zipped his bag open and took out a silver skull. He had gained Mana during his training earlier, and he poured some into the item. The eyes lit up with blue flame, and cracks began to appear on the surface. After ten seconds, the silver burst apart, pieces dropping onto the floor, and only an ethereal image of a skull remained hovering in front of him. It was motionless for a moment before the mouth gaped in a silent scream, and the skull morphed into Persephone's aged head. Then the voice came, heavily obscured by static.

"I didn't expect to hear back from you so soon, runt. Did you fail already? Talk fast, kid, the connection won't hold."

"Nice to see you to, Persephone. Why doesn't anyone just say 'Hi' anymore? And no, I didn't fail. I've examined this city I landed in. There are dormant Ley Lines under National City, and some of the people here have powers that carry a faint magical resonance. I think this one could work."

Persephone exhaled in relief and smiled showing two rows of prosthetic teeth. "I can't tell you how relieved I'm to hear that, runt. We are running out of energy here. Vampires are telling us that the Sun can hold up the barrier for another month, no more. Maybe two, if all of us pitch in. I don't think we have the time to send another scout to look for another universe. It's up to you and the pair who haven't reported yet."

"That's why I didn't wait," he said.

"Awaken the Ley Lines. Give us a beacon. I'll tell the others and we'll start attuning the Gate on our side. Good luck, Vulcan, and may the Oracles have mercy on the poor souls of whoever you get involved."

The spectral skull vanished with a pop, and the pieces of silver flew up from the floor and reformed the shell with a snap. Faint cracks now ran across the surface where it had shattered. He carefully put it back into the bag and wrapped it in three layers of cloth.

Kara was still in the shower, so he had time to explore. He shook his head with a smile: if she was going to take this long, she should have drawn a bath. After being restricted to a shower only once a week for years he was ready to worship a tub and a box of bath salt. He hoped the apartment didn't have a shower only—that would suck. But it was too upscale for such an oversight.

The design was great. A dining table was near the kitchen, the bathroom was to the side, and the bedroom was as far away as possible from the door and the common area. There was no training equipment and a quick scan revealed nothing out of the ordinary about the place. If he didn't know Supergirl lived here, he'd think Kara was an ordinary journalist. All of that drifted through his head as he went for the pantry. She didn't tell him not to touch any that, did she?

###

Tara lost all sense of time as hot water drained the tension out of her muscles. One of the downsides of being a Kryptonian was that she couldn't get a massage. Mon-El had been able to give her one, but he was married now and also busy with trying to repair his spaceship so he could get a thousand years into the future, so it wasn't like he was available. The heat was relaxing, and the day had been crazy. She left the shower, wrapped herself in one towel and her hair—in another. She then picked up the phone, answered a couple messages from Lena and went out the door, already doing research for an assignment from work. She needed to turn in an article on the chemical industry in National City tomorrow, and she had been able to do only half of that because of all the business with Vulcan.

Vulcan. He was in her apartment. And she was wearing a poorly tied towel. Dreading what she would see, she raised her eyes.

Her kitchen was covered in flour, and Vulcan was a white apparition spinning in the middle and creating chaos. He had found an apron somewhere, but it didn't help much. The air smelled of tomato sauce, and indeed there was a pen of tomato puree getting reduced on a low flame. He had a rolling pin in his hands and was attacking a ball of dough with fervor that blinded him to everything, including her.

Kara secured the towel better to avoid sitcom mishaps, walked up to the stove and tried the sauce. "A bit watery and plain," she said.

He motioned to the salt he had on the table without looking up. "I'll season later. Sorry about the mess, I haven't cooked in a while, so I didn't add enough flour, and then I tried to knead it into the dough. I'll clean up when I'm done. Shouldn't take more than ten minutes."

"Why are you cooking?"

"Figured I'd repay you a bit. And I missed cooking. Go, sit down, I'll be done soon."

Feeling strangely disappointed, she stepped away, picked up fresh underwear, sweatpants, and a t-shirt and changed in the bathroom. Her hair still wasn't ready for drying, so she left the towel on her head. By the time she got out, the kitchen was wiped clean, and Vulcan himself had mostly cleaned up with only specks of flour visible in his eyebrows. His hair was damp.

There were two plates of pasta with tomato sauce and ham. Vulcan was sitting with his back to the door and frowning into his plate.

She sat down at the table and breathed in the aroma. It smelled of tomato and garlic and seared meat. "I didn't figure you for a cook," she said.

"What?" He looked up. "Oh, it's nothing. Trifecta is the one to watch out for: my sister can cook a risotto blindfolded, and it would still turn out perfect. I can't cook it with my eyes open." He tried some of the pasta. "Well, I suppose this will do. Couldn't expect to keep up my skills without practice."

"Mmm. This tastes great. You are being too hard on yourself."

"Thanks, I guess. I need to hit a grocery store. Start with the basics again, or Trifecta will kick my ass when she gets here."

"I thought you had no family."

"Oh, that was about my parents. Trifecta is so much more than that. We grew up together, learned about our abilities together, fought together, and invented stuff together. She is the best twin sister a guy could hope for."

Kara smiled. "That sounds like Alex and me. Is she like you? With the light and sound?"

"Oh, Great Aether, no. That would be weird. No, Trifecta's abilities are about manipulating fate, time, and space. Which reminds me. With your permission, I'd like to test something. It's completely harmless."

Kara nodded and prepared just in case he was lying. He offered her his right hand, palm up. She wondered if he thought she'd take it when there was a play of shadow. Reality shuddered. That weird hymn sounded somewhere in the distance again, but now it was closer to her.

In Vulcan's hand was a deep-blue rose the exact color of her costume. Its leaves were red with gold veins. Gingerly, she touched it. It felt like a rose, it looked like a rose. She inclined her head and breathed in. It smelled of mulled wine on a cold winter night. She examined it with her x-ray vision, and it proved as real as to all her other senses.

"Extraordinary," said Vulcan. "It should have disappeared by now."

"Is it real?"

"It will last two hours and then simply vanish."

She poured some water into a vase, and put the rose in it. Its petals stood defiantly as if the flower had been cut only moments before and not conjured out of thin air. Vulcan had finished his food and stood near her now, looking at the rose as if it was a miracle given by Rao and not something he had made.

"It's impossible to believe," she said, "that you can just create a floweer."

He laughed then, and it was a pure, free sound. Before she knew it, he was hugging her and spinning her in a circle. She was about to push him away when she saw a bruise appear on the left side of his neck.

"You are hurt." She pointed to his neck. "I saw that happen before. What is that?"

He touched the bruised skin and grimaced. "Sometimes when I use my abilities too much, backlash happens. The real trouble starts when I don't absorb it. The results can be . . . unpredictable. But this was so worth it! Here you are, staring at the rose that defies reality, and yet you don't disbelieve. In fact, I don't think any of the people here do. This is such great news." He noticed he was still holding her, awkwardly let go, and stepped back. "Sorry for grabbing you. I wish you understood what this means for my people."

By this point, Kara was tired. The sun was up, but it was Saturday, and she needed a nap, because Friday had been too much. She waved at her room. "I'm gonna crash. Make yourself at home or whatever, just don't touch anything. If you need to sleep, use the couch."

He nodded, smiled, and began taking thick candles out of his bag.

"You know what, I'm not gonna ask. You hear me? I'm done."

She went to her bed, fell on it without changing into her pajamas, threw the blanket over herself and instantly fell asleep.

 **End of Chapter Notes**

This fic just kind of happened. I had an itch to read _Supergirl_ fanfiction, which I still can't find much of (TV series, not comics—recommendations would be great), and I missed writing magic a lot. If you came here from _Into the Maelstrom_ or _The Broken Creed_ , then don't worry. _True Aliens_ will be only about 30k words and three to four chapters long, so it shouldn't bite into the effort I put into my other fics. It just hurts me to see Alex and Kara go from heartache to heartache, and I want to try to change that through dark fantasy.

If you liked this chapter, please leave a favorite or a review on the way out. It would make me both happy and surprised that my compulsion to write this weird blend let someone else have fun.

If you are confused by all the magic mumbo-jumbo and don't mind spoilers, then read the background info below.

Otherwise, stay shiny and until next time.

 **Some Background Info**

By now you should be wondering something along the lines of 'What the hell did I just read?' If you aren't, it means that you are familiar with _Mage: the Awakening_ , so kudos!

Vulcan is a Mage from a world governed by the rules of magic from _Mage: the Awakening_ tabletop game. I'm not borrowing any specific characters and settings, but all the general stuff like mechanics and supernatural society structure is from there.

In that world, Heavens (called the Supernal) exist, and Mages can cast spells, because their souls travelled to those realms and etched their names in the ledgers housed in great Watchtowers. This contract lets the Mage draw upon the Supernal and impose their Will on reality, but only where it concerns some specific aspects called Arcana (that each Mage learns). Between the Supernal and the Material World lies the Abyss with lots and lots of Bad Things. Vulcan's schtick is Forces which lets him impose his Will upon any energy: electricity, sound, radiation, and gravity. He is also great with Life (no explaining necessary) and Prime, which lets him manipulate magic itself.

Magic, however, always comes with a price. Performing obvious supernatural feats draws upon the Abyss along with the Supernal, and the Mage has to either mitigate that effect through various tricks like rituals or spending more Mana, or otherwise absorb the backlash, which manifests as bruising and adds up. It gets worse with every spell cast in a short span of time. Nothing good happens when that backlash isn't contained.

What follows is the stuff I came up with.

A couple years back, Vulcan's world was approaching a major catastrophe, and some supernatural beings decided they could only prevent it by opening a breach into other planes of existence. This led to Bad Things pouring into the Material World, and what little remains of the sentient population of that universe are now holed up in enclaves on Earth under the supernatural protection crafted by the Fae, Mages, Vampires, and Werewolves. Both the mundane resources and those protections are wearing thin, however, so the survivors are sending scouts into different universes, searching for a place that has enough magic and metaphysical integrity to support them.

Vulcan was sent to the Arrowverse, specifically to Earth 38, at a point when his home has very little time left.


	2. Chapter 2

**Author's Notes**

Merry Christmas, everyone. May we get more brilliant stories next year. I certainly plan to pitch in with my weirdness and what talent I have.

This is a very niche fic by design, so each of you is all the more precious. As you see, I changed the name from _True Aliens_ to _Dark Colors of Magic_. Hopefully now that the name sucks less, a couple more people might wander in and surprise me by liking this weird mix.

Let's jump in.

 **Chapter 2**

"You are the one going, because you aren't that good," said Persephone before Vulcan's departure to Earth 38.

Vulcan looked at his mentor, waiting for the moment when the elderly woman would crack and look up at him with a smile that didn't suit the deep furrows of wrinkles that age and war had left on her face. Sure enough, Persephone's mouth twitched, and she socked him in the shoulder.

"Look, boy, you are our best chance. If it were just about survival, we'd send one of our furry friends out there, but the research is clear: we won't be able to open a path until there is active magic on the other side. So go already and make a door. I will see you then."

Vulcan looked at the faces of his Cabal. There were five of them, and he was the youngest. One of each Path, one of each Order, one of each perspective on life and Mysteries. His sister Trifecta came up and hugged him. There was a tear in the outer corner of her left eye, and he wiped it off. Hekate was even more somber than usual, and she gave him a double-barreled shotgun. "For luck," she said. Ullr lightly butted heads with him and said, "I believe in you, man. If anyone can get us out of this mess, it will be you."

He looked at the red sky for the last time. The sun was a black blot on it: it was the Vampires who came up with the idea of draining the Sun's power to delay the upcoming cataclysm, but there was little left to siphon off. This was their last-ditch effort to survive: send scouts into other dimensions, cross fingers, and hope that somewhere out there was a world with a destiny that had space in it for a hundred thousand supernatural beings of all kinds.

Their groups had warred against their own and each other, but ever since the Second Fall there had been no room for rivalry. The few enclaves that still existed in the badlands did so because of cooperation, generous use of Mysteries, and Spirit and Blood abilities. He was the seventh scout being sent out. Four of the previous ones had returned, reporting that the worlds they had visited were too weak to support magic: just as their world had split into pieces when the supernatural tried to bite off more than they could chew, those realities would fracture simply if more than a couple dozen of them stepped in them.

Today they had lost another outpost with three dozen Mages, twenty Werewolves, one Vampire, and a hundred humans. He had to succeed.

His friends and family stepped away, and the Grandmasters closed the inner circle. The Masters stood behind them, providing power for the ritual. As before this would drain everyone for at least two weeks. He would make sure the other end of the Gate would be ready by then.

###

It was sunlight outside, and Vulcan sat cross-legged under one of the enormous windows of Kara's apartment and soaked up the warmth and the sun. For the first time since coming to this universe he didn't need to scrounge for money or track someone or run. And the yellow sun felt wonderful on his skin. He had gotten used to lamps and red sunlight flaring through clouds of grey dust that hung in the air beyond the enclave barriers.

He wished it had been summer, so that he could smell the wooden table and chairs. Kara's loft reminded him of the first Sanctum he ever had, back when he and Trifecta had only become Mages and Persephone had taken them in for an apprenticeship. That apartment was on a sunny side of a six-floor building, and it had plenty of wood and soft surfaces. It was a warm home in more ways than one. Ullr would join later, his former Cabal tortured and killed by Banishers—Mages who hated everything magical including themselves. When they got attacked by that same Banisher Cabal later, Vulcan discovered why Persephone had survived to her age—she never said exactly how old she was. The neat little apartment had been stripped to concrete as they huddled around her, and she turned air into vaporized sulphuric acid and made it into an electricity conductor while Vulcan whispered a few encouraging words to the power outlets. Ullr got his revenge that day as the Banishers' bodies were paralyzed by electricity, their mouths clenched in silent agony as the acid peeled flesh off their bones.

Their next place didn't have sun or old, loved furniture. What it had were twisted corridors, Vulcan's automated guns, and Ullr's beasts. Their Cabal became complete with the arrival of Hecate who turned halls into endless loops and added doors that connected spaces dozens of feet away. Only the innermost rooms had a homely feeling to them, but they couldn't afford windows while anarchy and corporate greed swung the pendulum of society on their Earth with ever-increasing intensity. In the end, their precautions helped them stay alive when the end came, but he still didn't know what would have been better: to be torn apart among the first victims of the Hordes of Abyss or to watch families beat against the enclave's barriers as the crowd got leisurely eaten from behind.

"Hey, are you okay?"

A hand touched his shoulder, and he tried to jump back, but his legs were crossed and numb, so what happened instead is him falling sideways on the floor in a tangle of flailing limbs.

"Right. You are not okay. Wait here. Sit down, if you can." Kara strode into the kitchen and began brewing something.

Vulcan untangled his legs with his hands and stretched out on the wooden floor, letting the winter sun warm his skin. He was breathing heavily, and he almost reached for the sunlight to give it the intensity of summer. But he didn't trust himself: he could just as well turn it into sunlight on Venus and set Kara's apartment on fire. A minute of lying down made him well enough to stand and walk to the table. He dropped into a chair and held his face in his hands as he rubbed at his eyes. He smelled something delicious and looked between his fingers to see a steaming mug in front of him.

"Cocoa?" he asked. "I look that bad?"

She sat across from him, brought her mug to her lips, and the left corner of her mouth twitched in a smile. "You, buddy, look like you need a hug, a blanket, and a friend. But I'm still pissed at you for yesterday, so no hugs for you."

He found himself smile a little and took a slow sip of the sugary goodness. "Thank you," he said.

She was watching him like one watches a wounded animal, and he wondered what kind of look he had on his face. Kara asked, "Do you want to talk about it? It might help."

There was something inherently right about Kara in the sunlight. It lit up her blond hair, making it golden. The sun loved her. He said, "I wouldn't even know where to start."

"I can keep a secret, you know. You are already keeping mine."

He cocked his head to the left and thought about it. He hadn't really talked to anyone in days, and he missed his Cabal terribly, even Persephone with her patronizing and Ullr with his episodes of fatalism. He said, "I'm not good with sharing. But top me off on cocoa, and you can ask questions."

She bit her lower lip in thought, and he smiled at her. He could hardly believe she went out every day and fought criminals and villains of all calibers. He had expected someone more jaded, but Kara was as pure as anyone he had met. "You are looking at me weird," she said.

He lowered his eyes back to the cup. "Just wondering how you manage to stay positive after fighting the good fight for years. The news makes it seem like there is always another criminal, another alien invasion, another bigot."

Kara grimaced. "I was given these abilities, and they can help so many people, so I do it—simple as that. I used to believe that I could do this, and have everything else, but now . . . I'm not sure."

"What do you mean?"

She made a vague gesture with her hand. "A boyfriend, a home. Happiness for when I'm not Supergirl."

Vulcan stared at her then, at this beautiful girl in an apartment filled with paintings and photos that she most likely made herself. In a home with pictures of her sister and mother. He couldn't help himself: he laughed.

She said, "Hey, I'm opening up here! And I was the one supposed to be asking you questions!"

He hid his mouth behind the mug to allow himself another second of smiling. She squinted and pointed a finger at him. "You are still laughing. Stop it."

"Kara," he said. "I don't know you that long, but this is ridiculous, even with only what you told me at that café and what I learned since. You have a sister and a mother who love you. You have a career that you enjoy and that helps people in ways that Supergirl never could. You have a beautiful home. From the way you are talking, I would expect naked walls here, but it's photos and paintings and a worn typewriter that no doubt some great journalist used."

"Actually, I bought it at a flea market."

He waved in dismissal. "You have a great life. Don't sell yourself short." He shook his head. "Ask your questions, Kara Danvers. Maybe the answers will give you some perspective."

She abandoned the pretense of drinking and leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table and supporting her chin with her fists. "What are you, Vulcan? Why the weird name? Where are you from?"

He chuckled to suppress the mounting sense of dread. "Aren't you a reporter? Do they teach you to ask all the questions at journalism school?"

She stared at him, unimpressed. With a sigh, he said, "What do you think? I want to see how close you are."

She said, "I think you are a multidimensional being, like Mxyzptlk, and something bad happened in your home dimension so you came here to escape and possibly mess with us. Your reality-bending powers are kind of a giveaway."

Now that one wasn't something he was expecting. "Em-eks-who? Nope, I'm as ten-dimensional as you are. But you are close. I'm a Mage."

"A Mage." Her face was completely unreadable. "Like wand-wielding, robe-wearing, love-potion-brewing kind?"

Vulcan chortled. "Sure. Except I don't feel the need to fondle oblong objects all the time, I hate robes, and I couldn't brew a potion to save my life. But other than that, yes. It's why your sister couldn't find anything different about my blood: my powers have no basis in science. They come directly from my soul."

"There is no such thing as magic."

"Weird hearing it from you, seeing as you are a magical creature."

"What did you call me?"

"Get indignant all you want, but it's true. Your powers, they make no more sense than mine. I could run the numbers: there is no way you absorb enough energy from the sun to do what you can do for as long as you can do it every day. You should run out after three minutes of fighting." He leaned closer to her, catching a whiff of cinnamon from her hair. "And then there is the fact that I specialize in manipulating pure magic. I can see it, Kara. I can sense it when you use your abilities. And I can see it in the land under us. Ley Lines, converging into Hallows. Now, all of them are asleep and barely leaking any power, but make no mistake, this world is magical."

" _This_ world? So you _are_ from another dimension. Liar."

Vulcan shrugged. "No one ever asked, and I don't see _you_ advertising that you're a superhero. And I'm not from another dimension. Dimensions are just facets of existence. Your Em-ex-what's-his-face is probably right around the corner, and all you need to get to him is to move down or sideways or open a breach with some great big machine or somebody's powers. Me? I'm from another universe. A whole set of dimensions you've never heard about." He watched her for a few moments before sighing. "I thought you'd be more excited."

Kara said, "Honestly, so much has been happening lately that I think I've lost my ability to be properly surprised. And not like it changes anything unless you can turn time back seven months."

"Time travel into the past for more than a couple hours is never a good idea."

Now that got her attention. "You mean it can be done?"

Vulcan shook his head and smiled bitterly. "You are the one who gave me a lecture on crime. With some ingenuity, your powers would let you compress coal into diamonds. You could run a courier job for the government: ferry an air carrier somewhere and get paid millions of dollars for economized fuel and military personnel salaries. Why don't you?"

"It wouldn't be right." There was no hesitation in her voice. "People need someone to look up to, not someone who uses her powers for her own gain." And her face fell. "Oh."

Vulcan reached across the table and took her hand. He could feel the energy through her skin. "The universe hates paradoxes and it tries to restore any major alterations to the timeline. That is why most time magic is about looking at what happened in the past and glimpsing information from the future. And time travel is almost always done into the future when it is done at all. Trifecta would be able to explain the technical stuff better, but trying to fix distant past, events that have consequences firmly set in the future . . . it always comes to bite you in the ass. I'm afraid that whoever you lost is staying dead."

She jerked her hand away from his. "What? He's not dead. He's married. My boyfriend fell into a wormhole, went a thousand years into the future, lived there seven years while only seven months passed here. He got married, then by accident travelled thirteen thousand years into the past, put his entire crew into cryosleep, then his ship broke. Now Mon-El is here, and he can't go back to his new time because there is no cryosleep technology."

Vulcan scratched the growing stubble on the left side of his face. "Damn. Trifecta could probably send them all the way into the future with backing from a couple other Masters. I'd have to ask her, but it should be doable. Or, better yet, freeze them in time with a conditional trigger—"

"Sending them into the future isn't the problem! I still love him!"

"Damn," he said.

Up to that point there had been something unreal about Kara Danvers. She had been this sweet, kind, beautiful, and blond ideal of a woman. He had been polite to her, and funny and irritating, but it wasn't as much because he liked her as because Vulcan couldn't be anything else. Now she sat before him, so beautifully broken that he couldn't tear his eyes away.

Oh crap, he thought.

He said, "I don't know what to say about the whole time-traveling marrying thing except that it must suck. Wish I could help, but this is really more Trifecta's speed. She is trapped back home though. Hey." He snapped his fingers. "Maybe you can help me bring them here? I promise they can help you."

Kara shook her head. There were tears in her eyes, but not a single one spilled down her face. That girl had no idea when to let herself go. She said, "He's married, Vulcan. I can't just take him from his wife. Even if your nonsense powers would let me to."

Vulcan said, "Who said anything about getting him back? I figure, he's made his choice. The problem is that you didn't have the time to move on that he did, and, really, seven months of self-flagellating is enough. Trifecta, she can do with fate what I can do with energy. She can take a pizza delivery boy and attach a prophecy to him that might make him President. She can make it so the roulette always falls on zero. More importantly, she can alter bonds between people. The effects are temporary, but she could do it so that you and Mon-El would instantly become just friends. And by the time the spell fades, all the crap would be gone."

She dabbed the corners of her eyes with a napkin and shook her head no. "I won't rely on your voodoo to fix my personal life. That never ends well in movies." Kara drew a breath, straightened her back, and exhaled. "No, feeling like shit is life. I just need to accept it, that's all. And I don't need a reward to help you get your sister here. I mean, I'd be happy to help, as long as it's safe."

Vulcan frowned. It felt like he was taking advantage of her even more than was needed for the plan, and he found himself liking Kara Danvers. Supergirl was about as approachable as a slab of granite in her perfection, but Kara was something different. "Okay," he said. "If you want to deal with it on your own, I understand. But getting my people here is a pretty big deal to me, and you'll need to convince your boss to give me at least 12 hours in a closed room in the D.E.O., so I insist you get something. How about a favor? A permanent spell that doesn't immediately hurt anyone, that I and my group can cast. Help me get my family out of the dying world, and you will have this, I swear." He let Fate seal his oath, and a light breeze blew across the room. Kara shivered.

"Well, I can't stop you from being grateful," she said. "But I won't be cashing that favor in. Good people don't help others because they'll get something in return."

He laughed, "And that's why everyone loves you, Kara."

She chuckled. "Not everyone. That would be sort of troublesome, even at Christmas." She blinked. "Christmas! I invited everyone to a Christmas party tomorrow, and I literally have nothing prepared, and the place is a mess—"

"Breathe, Kara, breathe." This was his chance. "Maybe you should drop me out at the D.E.O. for a day and do what you need to do? I won't mind."

Even with all the panic, she threw him a suspicious look. He said, "The D.E.O. is built on a hub of Ley Lines. I can use their power to get my sister here." He hung his head. "It won't take long."

Kara said, "I don't have time for this right now, so if you want to be locked up, then be locked up. We need to figure something out for tomorrow though: it would be sad to celebrate Christmas at the D.E.O."

Vulcan stared into the window. "Maybe. It would be worse without my people."

###

By evening, he was in a containment cell, and Kara was off to do holiday things. They had let him have his bag after scanning it for tech and left him alone to do whatever. Kara had explained to J'onn about magic. Vulcan could see that the big man was skeptical, but he trusted Kara, and so let Vulcan do his thing. Plus it seemed like J'onn wanted Kara to have some non-microwaved food on the table tomorrow, and apparently Christmas dinners required a lot of prep. The holiday was more of a historical curiosity to Vulcan than something real, but he hadn't told anyone that. He needed them to be complacent.

The cell sealed metahuman and alien powers. It was also underground, which meant that dormant Ley Lines pretty much passed through it. The first thing he did after getting locked in was cast a simple sound alteration spell through the glass. It worked, so their tech did jack against his powers. He opened his bag, and took out the candles he had charged yesterday with Mana.

He wished there was another way, but there wasn't. He would open the Gate.

Vulcan began to draw the circle on the floor with a piece of chalk, muttering to himself in Atlantean.

Around him, the air began to shift, and sparkles of energy began to flare to his Sight.

He focused and prepared for the ritual.

###

M'yrnn had forgotten more about willpower than his son J'onn had ever known. Since his rescue, the ancient Green Martian often walked the halls of the D.E.O., and he saw that these humans were both resilient and innovative. They were also young and arrogant, and the only thing keeping them alive was his son's superior experience. M'yrnn didn't lend his wisdom often, as he felt that it would be too much for these short-lived humans. The perspective he had exceeded their lifespan after all, and he wasn't sure they even should think of their society and their planet in terms of what it would look like in a few centuries.

But something had changed yesterday. In the back of his mind, M'yrnn heard the whispers of his god H'ronmeer, promising great change and destruction. The same whispers had appeared before the war against the White Martians, and so M'yrnn was afraid. He didn't want to bother his son before having anything concrete, so he wandered the halls of the D.E.O. until he came to one of the containment halls with a cell at the end. M'yrnn didn't have authorization to open the cell, but he could get closer and look.

By this time, it was already dark outside. The little Kryptonian and her adopted sister had left to prepare for the celebration of the coming year. His son was somewhere in the building, no doubt still working. But even he was going to rest on Christmas Eve.

Apparently, the man inside the containment cell didn't was as unaware of the spirit of this Christmas as M'yrnn himself. To the naked eye, the cell was covered in weird squiggles drawn in black marker, and a crazy young man was sitting in the lotus position in a circle of five thick black candles, swaying slowly and whispering something under his nose.

But M'yrnn was psychic.

He could hear the runes one the walls. Each symbol whispered a story: of how the world was made, of how fish became narrower near the tail, of how humans learned to make fire, of how the world would end . . . The candles didn't burn just wax, they also burned pure psychic energy, though how this was possible M'yrnn didn't know. And the man's mutterings weren't mutterings at all, but thoughts given form. Every word was a pure concept that he could somehow hear through the glass: hole, road, sky, earth, mind, body.

And he could hear something primordial wake in the air, as if the air molecules could now have thoughts, slow and alien.

M'yrnn hurried to get J'onn.

They were back at the cell in five minutes. He said, "My son, who is this person? Why did you let him do this here?"

J'onn said, "He certainly wasn't doing _that_ when he started. He told Supergirl that he is a Mage, whatever that means."

"You let a sorcerer into your home? Have you lost your senses?"

"They are just superstitions, father. I'm sure there is a perfectly rational explanation for his abilities."

"My son, sorcery is quite real and incredibly dangerous. You have seen the staff of H'ronmeer with your own eyes—are you so determined in your blindness that you ignore this? The air sings, and the city answers. Whatever he is doing, it's building up on itself. You need to stop him."

J'onn wavered. He said, "Are you sure interrupting him won't make it worse?"

"All I know is that whatever he is dong, it will bring great destruction."

J'onn nodded and went up to the containment cell. He put in the code, pressed his palm to the authorization panel and pulled on the door. It didn't budge.

Inside, Vulcan opened his eyes. They were filled with orange light. It drifted out in wisps, but those didn't gently disperse into the air. They coiled, and whirled, and spread into monstrous snakes of fire. J'onn stepped back.

Snakes drifted through the glass, their tails still attached to Vulcan's eyes. The left one was redder and fatter than the right one. It opened its eyes and said, "Mas-s-ster doesn't want us-s-s to harm you. Yet we are s-s-serpents. Born to hunt, to burn, to s-s-strangle. Mas-s-ster s-s-says, interrupting him will caus-s-se him to explode like a nuclear bomb."

And they drifted back through the glass, the air now hotter. The snakes languidly flew back into Vulcan's eyes, and he closed them. The room grew considerably darker.

M'yrnn said, "The beasts had no thoughts. They were just him."

The containment cell couldn't be opened now, that much was clear. "What do we do now?" asked M'yrnn.

"We wait," said J'onn.

###

They forgot about Vulcan soon enough. Kryptonian symbols appeared throughout the night all through National City. Kara went to see Coville, and he shared a prophecy with her. Vulcan had mentioned prophecies, so she thought he might be able to help them, but she couldn't risk blowing him up. Winn's sensors inside the cell transmitted worrying levels of solar and nuclear radiation, and he said that it being sealed was a very, very good thing, because that level of exposure was likely to leave all of them sprouting extra heads. Vulcan seemed to be fine though, despite not moving or peeing or whatever for a full day now.

Since they couldn't do anything about him, Kara followed Alex's advice and went home to have her Christmas party. Everyone came, even M'yrnn, and she was happy with how the evening turned out. Later she would wonder if this was the last time her life would resemble normalcy.

Worldkiller they called the Kryptonian she faced later. Kara would call her Wireface because her choice of headwear sucked. She was no joke in combat though: powerful and completely ruthless. They fought for what felt like hours, and unlike Worldkiller, Kara couldn't let get civilians hurt. In the end, this proved her undoing.

Her entire body hurt, and she barely had the energy to move, but inside her, a voice was screaming, _It can't end like this. I sacrificed so much! Where is Mon-El, where is a good chunk of Kryptonite, where is Vulcan with his stupid powers? And somebody kill the damn music!_

Worldkiller had her by the throat over the edge of a skyscraper. She released Kara. Air rushed past her, and she thought for a moment how falling felt more liberating than flying. A damn chorus was singing somewhere near. She knew it was Christmas, but now was not the time! She needed just one ounce of strength to stop her fall, but it seemed like all the sun had gone out of her.

The chorus reached a crescendo, and the world exploded in golden light.

Kara was in the clouds or rather above them. They were white under her feet and yet lightning arced between them, booming with thunder. Powerful winds buffeted her from all sides, hitting her with heat and cold, and making it hard to maintain her flight with her wings.

Wings? She looked at the things she had noticed with her peripheral vision and noticed that she did indeed have white wings of an angel. She was also naked.

Somehow, this did not bother her. There was no sun, yet light shone from everywhere, and Kara knew that wherever this was, nothing wrong could happen in this realm. Pure power and righteousness were in the air here, and they wouldn't tolerate dirt.

She saw a glimmer of gold in the distance, and knew that she was supposed to go there. As she flew, the light took her aches away, making her skin shine from the inside. The fight with the Worldkiller, troubles of her heart, and her dual nature—how could she have let any of that distract her? She should have spent her energy making the world more like this: strong, honest, and just.

The golden pinprick became a spire, then it became a tower. A staircase led up to it and two figures in shining silver armor stood in front of it, flaming swords crossed in front of the first step. Their wings were of deep-blue fire, and the faces under their hoods shone with light, so she couldn't see them. She flew up to the figures and went to one knee.

Their voices were like a world getting spoken into being. **_"Do not kneel, Kara Zor-El, for you are worthy. Ascend the stairs and claim your prize."_**

The swords parted, and she stepped onto the first step. Immediately, gravity pulled her to the ground, but she gorund her teeth and took another step. Unbearable heat soon joined gravity, followed by a deafening screech. Electricity arced through her, radiation burned her skin, and sunlight hurt her eyes, but she didn't stop. At some point she was sure she felt the familiar pain of being exposed to Kryptonite, but by that point she couldn't see, hear, or sense anything. All she knew was that she was still on the stairs.

And then it was over.

Kara was in front of doors, towering hundreds of feet high. They were engraved with images of hosts of angels along the perimeter, but the center was occupied by the image of a giant key. She leaned on the doors and prepared to push with all her might, but they swung open easily.

She took a step inside and ended up in a cylindrical chamber that could house a small city. Rows upon rows of windows flooded it with so much light that there was no shadow anywhere. An obelisk of silver towered in the middle of the room, and Kara flew to it. Its surface was covered in names engraved onto it. Hundreds, thousands of them. They were of every nationality, and each one was in unique handwriting. She knew that this was what she came here for. She found an empty spot, and switched on her heat vision. She wrote.

 _Kara Zor-El_

And in Aether, what is written becomes truth.

###

Vulcan felt it the moment it happened. Reality shuddered as a righteous soul reached out to his Watchtower, and he had an idea of who that was. He hadn't been exposing her to all the magic that he could for nothing, after all.

He rose from his position on the floor. The ritual had ended two hours ago, and he had been pulling Mana from the newly-awakened Hallow. He was topped out on magical energy now, and it was time to enact the final part of the plan. He began casting.

His muscles filled with power. His body grew hard as granite. His martial arts skills moved beyond those of greatest human masters. His sight was that of a hawk, his smell was that of a dog, his hearing was that of a cat. He wrapped his fists in a layer of kinetic energy blades grinding against each other.

Then he dropped the kinetic energy cancellation spell on the door, opened it, and walked out.

J'onn should have reengaged the lock after trying to open it.

The door to the hall opened, and agents began to pour in, but Vulcan simply wrapped himself in complete invisibility and cast flight on himself. He was tapped out on spells now, but it was worth it to hurl himself above their heads, through the halls he had memorized, to the balcony and outside.

Even half a city away, he could sense her light, and it didn't take long for him to reach Kara.

"How are you still standing?" asked somebody dark and brooding.

Vulcan had the same question. Red blood poured down Kara's forehead, but she stood firm, and her eyes were focused. She and her opponent were in the middle of a street, and it was wrecked: cars were overturned, lamp-posts had person-sized dents in them, and the asphalt would need some major repairing. By the way light behaved around the second woman, he her as another Kryptonian.

"Vulcan, get out of here," said Kara without turning to him. "Wireface will kill you."

Kara's aura was different now, but he didn't have the time to analyze it. He turned to the other Kryptonian and said, "I don't have time for this."

He grabbed at the sunlight inside Wireface, and tore.

Something rotting spread out of her body and screamed at his spell in a shriek that made his oversensitive ears bleed. Magic wavered and drew a single strand of sunlight out of her. He fell on his knees.

Kara used this distraction to pick up a Toyota Camri and hurl it at the woman, sending her a block away.

"Get up," she said. "Wireface is no joke. You shouldn't be here."

"My name is Worldkiller!" She came flying from the opposite direction Supergirl had sent her into screaming, "Sorcerer. There are no Sorcerers on Earth!"

A fist slammed into his stomach, but instead of soft flesh, it found the hardened plates of an armadillo strengthened to the density of a tungsten alloy. She shattered them, and he was sent to the ground, coughing.

The villain began making the standard villainous speech. I am justice, you are not a hero, etcetera.

With a sigh, Vulcan reached into the right pocket of his trousers and took out a silver coin. He said a magic phrase which, in this case, was "US President Howard the Duck."

The world cringed as the coin explained to it that, in truth, all possibilities were equal. The sun rising in the east tomorrow, a six-sided-die rolling a seven, a soda can spontaneously combusting, a shift to a lower quantum state making a supernova of kittens explode in a vacuum. The coin suggested that something bad should happen to the mean lady with the weird facial accessories.

A dragon that had been imprisoned by Morgana between realities for an eternity found a way to escape at that precise moment, precisely to Earth 38, and precisely to that street. The great beast was made of horns, and teeth, and red scales and fire that burned steel. It looked down, saw someone who looked like the emo witch that had sealed him, and batted her away with a lash of its tail. It then squinted, saw that the annoying spellcaster was still alive, and raised itself into the air with three flaps of its wings. It then went after Worldkiller with the speed of a super-jet.

Kara stood in the street with her month hanging open. "What was that?" she said.

"A gift from Trifecta. Speaking of which, please stand still."

A pained roar sounded in the sky, and he knew that they didn't have much time. Vulcan reached out into his left pocket and took out a silver skull covered in cracks.

Kara asked, "What are you doing?"

He said, "Something is possessing her. I can't get it out, not with my specialty. And there is some sort of magical protection on her. But I bet Ullr can do it."

He held the skull up high and then smashed it on the ground. He could see the D.E.O. coming in. Two Green Martians were flying above the cars, but it didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.

The silver broke, and a spectral skull appeared at eye level. It turned to him with the empty hollows of its eyes, and he pointed to Kara. It looked at her, opened its mouth, went up in flames, and began to scream.

Oh, how a shard of Persephone's soul screamed.

A sharp pain pierced his chest, and Vulcan fell to his knees. It felt like a grater was being slowly drawn against his heart. Kara was at his side immediately. "What did you do? Are you all right? Why are you glowing?"

He smiled and grabbed her hand. If he focused, he could see wings of flame behind her back. "I'm not actually glowing, Kara. You are a Mage now, and what you see is my aura. More importantly, you are a beacon."

She drew back at that. Somewhere in the distance, a dragon made a roar full of scorn and desperation. Kara asked, "A beacon for what? I thought you wanted to bring your family here."

The skull finished burning, and the pain in his chest ended. Vulcan allowed himself a tired smile. "I never lied. You just didn't ask the right questions." He pointed behind her back. "A beacon for that."

Worldkiller landed five feet from him, raising a cloud of debris. "You cannot stop me, sorcerer. I come from a different people. I am born both of technology and magic."

Kara wasn't looking at her. She said, "Holy crap."

A gateway appeared on the street twenty feet away from them. It was the entire width of the road and the pavement and fifty feet high. It shimmered in the air without visible support.

Vulcan said, "You might be the most powerful being on the planet right now, Worldkiller. But if I've learned on thing is that no matter how bulletproof you are, enough bullets will still kill you. Even if the only thing they can do to you is choke you."

The gateway quivered, and a girl walked out of it. She was no taller than five-foot-one and was wearing the same kind of heavy coat that Vulcan wore. Her face also resembled his. Another ripple, and three more people came through: an ancient woman, a man dressed all in crude leather, and a woman dressed like she had come out of a gothic role-play shop.

Vulcan said, "Ullr, the dark-skinned one is possessed. I'll tear down protections, you do your thing."

Worldkiller said, "You think you can—"

What people forgot about Vulcan was that he didn't specialize in brute force. Sure, he was good at it, but his true mastery lay in manipulating magic itself. After observing Worldkiller he had seen enough. He hit her with a wave of magic, blowing apart the magical seals that protected the darkness inside the body from magical attack. Ullr reached him, and smiled. He said, "You have no power here, Spirit. I banish you back to the Shadow."

The older Mage snapped his fingers. Worldkiller yelped like a cat that had its tail stepped on, and she crumbled to the ground.

Kara was looking at them with wide eyes, and the D.E.O. cars had arrived along with everyone and their mother. Alex ran up to her sister. "Kara, are you alright? What the hell happened here? Who are these people? What is that?"

Persephone said, "Vulcan we asked them to give us two minutes. The time is almost up."

"Right," said Vulcan. "These are Persephone, Ullr, Hecate, and Trifecta. They are my Cabal. My family, I suppose. And that is the gateway." He gestured to the barrier. "Thank you for giving me the means to build a bridge between your world and ours, we will be sure to repay you once the refugees come through."

"Refugees?" said Alex. "What refugees?"

J'onn looked like he had swallowed a lime whole. He said, "I should have known. How many, and are they all as much of a pain in the ass as you?"

Persephone laughed at that—the sound of crinkling parchment. "Little Vulcan, trouble? You are funny, big alien man."

Vulcan said. "There are a hundred thousand—"

"It's eighty thousand," said Trifecta. "We lost the western barriers, brother."

Vulcan grit his teeth. "Eighty thousand. Just, please, don't shoot. Whatever comes out of that barrier."

Kara said, "What do you— Holy crap. Is everyone seeing this?"

A man stepped through, but he wasn't a man. His face was made entirely of clockwork, and globes of red glass were his eyes. He said, "Howdy, Vulcan. You smartass, you saved us all."

After him, a giant wolf-man stepped through. Bipedal, and nine feet tall, he looked like he could bite a car in half. He just growled at Vulcan in what was probably supposed to friendly manner.

"Welcome to your new home, Hope-Breaker," said Vulcan.

"Hope-Breaker?" Kara sounded like she had a migraine.

"Only to his enemies," said Vulcan. "To his friends he is the One-Who-Cuddles."

The wolf growled in a decidedly aggressive manner, and his skin rippled. He shifted into a black man, muscular and dressed only in slacks. Only his eyes had yellow irises. "You always had shit sense of humor, Vulcan."

A woman stepped through the gate. She was gorgeous: with full red lips and pale skin, and clothes that had probably cost twenty grand, because they looked like they were straight off a 1920s movie set.

Alex said, "Well, at least she looks human."

Kara reeled back. "What the— her heart."

Vulcan said, "Kara, be reasonable."

Kara said, "It's not beating."

Trifecta said, "So watchwork men don't make her freak out, and Veronica does. Typical."

The woman got closer and laughed when Kara took a step back. "Hush, child," she said.

Kara took another step back. "Now it _is_ beating. Vulcan, what is this?"

J'onn said, "Are all the refugees like this?"

Vulcan said, "Some are humans. Like Mike. Hi, Mike."

Mike was a one-eyed guy in his sixties who had a rifle over his right shoulder that looked like it could be used for hunting elephants. Two bands with grenades were draped around his torso. He said, "How you doing, Vulcan? When you'll have time, could you grow my eye back? This city looks neat, I'd like to have my vision back for a while."

Vulcan said, "Sure thing, Mike."

The gate rippled, and ten people came through, although only some of them could truly be described as people. Then twenty more. Then thirty.

"Sir," asked one of the agents. "What do we do?"

J'onn said, "Patch me through to the mayor. I need space cleared up in ten-block radius. Nobody leaves, especially your friends, Vulcan. Shit, I'll have to wake up Madam President on Christmas now."

Behind him, Worldkiller rose and pulled off the mesh of metal off her face. "Argh, what happened? Wow. Why is there a guy made of watch parts? Did I hit my head?"

Kara's brows just kept climbing this evening. To Vulcan, it almost looked like another Kryptonian superpower. She said, "Sam?"

###

This morning Kara had been told about a prophecy that was supposed to be about the ultimate meaning of her life: to defend Earth against some primordial Kryptonian evil. She had felt terrible when she heard Coville. She had felt like a tool of some long-dead priest and thought that nothing could shake her more.

She had been wrong.

Nobody on their side was happy. J'onn glared at everyone in the room, Alex frowned, and Kara herself was confused. She could see sound and warmth now, and she had a decent guess that her new powers had nothing to do with her being an alien and everything with how Vulcan described what he and his people could do.

On the other side of the conference table were Vulcan and his Cabal. They sat together, smiled—except Vulcan—and talked in quiet voices. Leaders of all the factions of refugees had stayed with their people to talk to the mayor of National City and to the President and to keep the refugees inside the perimeter that the army had established and.

"The gate disappeared," said J'onn. "So your people are stuck here. Shouldn't you lot be out there, talking to the press and the politicians?"

Trifecta had a silver coin in her right hand, and she was doing coin tricks with it: throwing it into the air and then pulling it out from behind her ear. Somehow Kara knew that no magic was involved. She said, "Nah, we are better here. When Vulcan agreed to do this, we asked that the United Council deal with the shitstorm that would undoubtedly follow. Vulcan did his job. Now let them wriggle and try to resolve this."

J'onn said, "You don't look worried. You dropped an equivalent of a super-powered army into the middle of National City, and you are surrounded on all sides by guns."

Vulcan smiled, "Your people would need to be insane to attack us so close to civilians. And I'm sorry, Director, but we had nowhere to go. Our universe was dying, and now that there is nobody at the enclaves to maintain their protections, they are no doubt overwhelmed by the hordes of the Abyss. We have nowhere to return to."

Kara said, "And so you think we should just let you go on about your business? Some of your people are vampires, for Rao's sake! Most of them possess powers that make them worse than most aliens. I can barely handle what goes on in this town as it is, how do you expect me and the police deal with this number of people with abilities we know nothing about?"

Vulcan and his group looked at each other, and a silent conversation seemed to pass between them. Hell, it was perfectly possible that a conversation did pass. Vulcan said, "Not without help from some of us, that's for sure. Whether you like it or not, we are here, and I'll be honest, it would cost nothing for a lot of us to bypass your blockade. So work with us. We aren't some uneducated immigrants out to get your jobs or something."

Trifecta snapped her fingers, "I know! Let us find that Worldkiller person that had all of you quivering in your boots. Let's see how she likes a taste of real magic."

J'onn said, "I thought you banished whatever possessed Samantha Arias."

Ullr said, "Yes, I _banished_ it. But there was a deep connection between it and the host, and it will try to get her back. It has powers of its own, and this time it will be more careful. The only way to keep everyone safe is to track the Spirit to its lair and destroy it there."

While everyone was discussing tactics and how to best deal with Worldkiller, Vulcan rose and motioned Kara to go with him. J'onn was about to stop her, but she shook her head. They did need to talk. A minute passed in silence as they left the conference room and went deeper into D.E.O. corridors, in the direction of the armory. The building was empty, because every available agent and even Mon-El and Imra were out there, keeping an eye on the new arrivals.

Kara said, "That's far enough." Vulcan stopped and turned to her, but didn't look her in the eye. "You used me," she continued. "You said you wanted to save your sister, but what you really meant was all the people from your world. Why didn't you tell me? Do you think I wouldn't have helped?"

Vulcan looked tired and sad in the fluorescent light. He smirked, and it looked about as cheerful as a wilting rose. "Kara, it wouldn't have been your call. You are too honest and by-the-book to decide on your own that a hundred thousand people can come to your city. You would have told J'onn, he would have reported to the President, and the whole thing would have needed a bill and a Congress vote. If you can rely on anything in any world, it's on Congress killing any attempt to do good on any planet. By the time they could have approved my people coming here, there would have been nobody left."

"What you did was still wrong."

"I know. But anything else and Trifecta would have been dead. And all my friends, and all my enemies. I wasn't about to become the last memory of a dying world. I thought you'd understand that."

She did understand, but it didn't stop her from feeling wretched. Since the experience she had had during her fall, she couldn't shake the feeling that what Vulcan did went fundamentally against his nature. She shared something with him now, and it was a connection to a place of brilliant power and honesty. Which brought her to her next point. "You knew, didn't you? You wanted me to become one of you."

Vulcan said, "I hoped. Not everyone who gets these powers should have them. But you are one of the best people I know, Kara. And I needed a new Mage to be born on this world to create a gate and prove that your universe could sustain the kind of magic I wanted to bring into it." He looked at her for a moment of silence before sighing. "What do you want, Kara? I can explain myself all day, but the gist of it won't change: what I did was necessary, even if it was wrong and required Trifecta and Hekate putting a compulsion on me before I came here."

"What was that skull?"

His smile was more honest this time. "Smart and observant? That was a shard of Persephone's soul. The only way to establish a bridge between realities is with two soul shards. Souls exist outside and above separate universes. By burning a tenth of Persephone's soul, I was able to anchor the Gate on this side."

She knew the answer already, but the words still slipped out of her mouth. "The second shard?"

"Had to be mine," he said. "They needed a connection to here."

###

Vulcan was exhausted. He had restored his body, and Hekate had cleared his mind, but nothing could be done for the hole left in his soul. He needed to lie down, rest, spend time with his Cabal. Instead he had to come back to the conference table and waited while the others talked.

J'onn said, "Samantha woke up. Supergirl . . . I don't know how to say it, but she isn't altogether there. She rambles in Kryptonian at somebody only she can see, and when she's coherent, she calls for Ruby."

Kara glared at Vulcan, and he shook his head. "This is not our doing. Whatever took over her mind wasn't gentle. It redecorated."

Kara said, "You said you owed me a favor. Fix her."

J'onn said, "Supergirl, I understand that she is your friend, but if you have leverage—"

"She has a kid, J'onn! She's just a single mom who got wrapped up in all of this. And she is a Kryptonian too. I have to help her. At any cost. So fix her, you lot. Prove you can be helpful."

Vulcan felt a stab of anger. Naïve girl. Then he shuddered: soul damage was no joke. He found Persephone at his elbow. She looked up at him and whispered a word. Something warm filled the void, and even if it was just magic, it lessened the grating pain he felt all over his magical being. Persephone said, "You need to compensate, Vulcan. Soul damage is hard for someone of your morals. And the child has spoken. Trifecta, do it."

Trifecta rose her left arm. Her silver charm bracelet was on her wrist as always, and it jingled melodically as she moved her hand through a complex pattern. She said, "Oaths have been spoken. Our names are now bound together, Kara Zor-El. Your birth name compels you to uphold your vow. Your second name, Kara Danvers, compels you to be just and honorable while you fulfill your oath." Trifecta's power filled the room, and he could sense time itself dilate. Silver strands of fate became visible to him, weaving them all together. "In return, we accept the oath taken by Vulcan on our behalf. We, Tempest Talons, swear to help you restore Samantha Arias to full mental and physical health. May whoever breaks this vow see their power broken and their life plagued by misfortune."

The strings snapped into place, forming a web, and vanished. Vulcan laughed at the stunned look on Kara's face. He said, "This is how we do contracts back home."

J'onn said, "You shouldn't have done that, Supergirl."

"I can't just leave—"

Doors to the room burst open and a livid Olivia Mardin burst in, followed by a grim Kat Grant. Veronica, Hope-Breaker, and the Autumn King walked in after them, completely calm.

"They've disappeared," said Mardin. "The whole damn eighty thousand of them went poof, and now we have no idea where they are. These three do." She pointed to the group behind her. "But they aren't talking."

Veronica made an elaborate bow. "We stayed back to clear up a misunderstanding. Madam President, Director." Her face was a mask of politeness. "Your jobs are hard enough without the trouble, so we never intended to force taking care of refugees upon you, and we have no desire to live under government supervision and wait for years while you decide what to do with us."

Hope-Breaker grunted in approval. He said, "My people are born to run free under the Moon, not graze in cities like common cattle."

The Autumn King spoke, and Vulcan could smell cinnamon. "What my lupine friend here means is that we'll be out of your hair in a jiffy. I'm sure there are plenty of countries that would be happy to take us. We'll stay in the Shadow for now."

"What is the Shadow?" asked Kat Grant. "It doesn't sound ominous at all."

Hope-Breaker grinned. His teeth were perfectly normal, but Vulcan still caught a glint of something sharp. A Werewolf this powerful wasn't fully human even when he was in the human world. "The Shadow world is where the Spirits live in a reflection of this world. We the Uratha have rights and duties there by our birth, and have extended an invitation to other supernatural beings."

Marsdin was about to explode, but Veronica interrupted her. "I'm afraid you don't have any jurisdiction there. Or in whatever country that will take us. Maybe we'll just buy an island. Somewhere tropical, where people like to party."

Hope-Breaker chuckled and even that came with a growl. "To think we once feared humans."

Veronica said, "Yes, it got much easier once you lot got past your distaste for us drinking blood."

Hope-breaker snorted. "One plastic bottle plant does more harm than all you Vampires put together."

The three dignitaries bowed. "Anyway," said the Autumn King. "We are sorry for disturbing your celebration. I am sure that we will have much to offer each other in the future, Madam President. Until then."

Veronica and the Autumn King grabbed on to Hope-Breaker. He grinned, and Vulcan saw his teeth extend as his body bulged with extra thirty pounds of muscle. He hunched forward, and his ears sharpened. Fur sprouted up his neck and over his hands. Veronica waved goodbye, and the trio took a step forward. Vulcan stared as hard as ever, but he still missed the moment of the group vanishing.

Vulcan looked at the humans in the room. "Fascinating," he said. "There is no Lunacy here either. All of us are finally free from our curses."

Mordin turned to him. "You. You started this mess."

Vulcan didn't have the energy for a retort anymore. "I'm sorry Madam President, but my Cabal swore to help Samantha Arias. We need to get going. You too, Supergirl. Hekate, if you would be so kind."

Mordin said, "Who the hell is Samantha Arias?"

Hekate reached forward with her right arm and yanked, but nothing appeared. Shadows stirred in the corner of the room, and Vulcan heard screams of people coming face to face with their own monstrosity. Hekate gritted her teeth and pulled again. A very confused Samantha Arias appeared in a swirl of black, jabbering in a language he didn't know.

Ullr whispered a word and slashed a hand through the air. A rift appeared, leading into darkness. He said, "I suggest anyone not invited doesn't follow us unless you don't want to ever go back to the material world. Everyone else, stick to me or you won't get out."

They filed into the portal. Vulcan was last. He turned, and saw Kara, unmoving. "You promised," he said. "And she needs your help." He pointed to the other Kryptonian who was looking around the dark mirror of the conference room, her lips parted as if she was going to scream any second. "For starters," he said. "Your presence seems to calm her."

Kara nodded, took Samantha's hand, and dashed through the portal before anyone could stop her. Ullr shut the gateway behind her.

 **End of Chapter Notes**

To be honest, this fic is my escape from the way I feel at the moment. This crazy story makes me happy, precisely because it's so weird. It's a selfish fic.

So if you wandered in and read this weirdness and liked it, please leave a review. For me and for this story, every reader is an amazing surprise.

I'll wrap _Dark Colors of Magic_ before the New Year or a week after.

Until then, stay shiny.

P.S. I'm considering writing something more serious in the Arrowverse. I might do a couple short stories in parallel with the bigger stuff I'm writing in other fandoms now and a larger work once I finish _The Broken Creed_ or _Into the Maelstrom_. There is a lot of potential in the fandom, but so much of the show's likability rides on how the actors portray their characters . . . It would be fun to try and capture that purely through text.


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